Although I was super excited to see my dear ones, I will admit that I also felt a bit nervous. You see, it had been at least a year since I had seen many of these people, and it was almost exactly one year ago when I told them I would be leaving academia and working in industry.

Why was I so nervous? Even though I knew I had to walk away from the career I once loved, the decision was very difficult. I had put a lot of time and energy into my education that prepared me for the academy. My grad program and mentors had invested a lot in me, and I felt like I was letting people down—and I’ve lived most of my life as a people pleaser. So to say I felt anxious walking into that conference hotel with no idea who I would run into is an understatement.

I couldn’t be more wrong.

Faces lit up when they saw me. Pleasantly surprised, folks exclaimed, “what are you doing here?!” before giving me a huge hug. I even ran into my beloved Ph.D. advisor and was able to catch up with her and my grad school friends as if nothing had changed.

With my academic colleagues at AEJMC

But actually, something had changed, based on what I was told. My friends said I seemed calmer, happier, more zen. My energy was no longer the hot mess of stress and anxiety that appeared to be my norm just over a year ago. That I looked good, that I should keep doing yoga, that my hair looked great—ok, these physical things shouldn’t matter as much, but it was still all very flattering.

I even got a few, “so, you’re coming back to academia, right?!” comments, to which I replied:

“I’m good right now. I have a good job, and I’m happy, and I have better work/life balance. I’m gonna stick with this right now.”

Right now.

Right now I don’t know what my future career holds for me. Right now I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to academia, or if I’ll make yet another pivot down the road. Right now I’m honestly trying not to think about it too much.

Nope, right now I’m going to keep riding this positive wave of energy I’m apparently radiating and continue doing what feels right. Because that’s how I feel.

Right now.

Hello everyone. My name is Rowena. I am a junior faculty member. And I am a non-stop workaholic. And an achievement whore. And a people pleaser.

…what happens when you come across a non-stop working, people pleasing, achievement whore, you may ask? Well, let me tell you…

You end up with an overwhelmed, over committed, anxiety-and-depression-driven young academic who is getting BURNT OUT to the max.

No, I am not writing this to evoke sympathy. I am writing this to shed light on an issue that based on many informal conversations with colleagues and friends, seems to be taking hold of so many bright, motivated, capable academics, which to me may lead to folks not reaching their full potential. And that’s just plain sad.

With that said, I can’t speak for those colleagues and friends. You will need to ask them for their stories. Here, I finally found the time (and the courage, to be perfectly honest) to share mine. So here goes:

I have had the basic gist of this blog post in the back of my mind for months now, and it remained there until winter break, when I finally had enough time and energy to write what has been on my mind and heart for a while. The bottom line is this: the fact that I couldn’t carve an hour of my day to write this post is nobody’s fault but my own. Again, I am not here to make a sob story out of my extremely busy life, which in 9 times out of 10, is a very fun, exciting life.

No, the goal of this post is to share how I’ve felt and what I’ve learned/am learning about stress management and balancing it all within the confines of the academy, and to “come out of the closet”by explicitly stating that it has truly been a struggle.

That last point is actually what inspired the title of this post. When you graduate from a top Research 1 institution having folks tell you that you’re a “very strong job candidate,” followed by several years at your new job with everyone telling you that “you’re a rockstar, you’re going to get tenure, how do you do it all, etc. etc.” – can I just be vulnerable and frank for a second and say that there have been times when the pressure can be super overwhelming, andthe expectation to be amazing all the time can be exhausting in and of itself?Throw in the fact that you’re generally a very extroverted, happy, fun person with a touch of perfectionism and the anxiety associated with being “on” at all times is even greater.

This all reminds me of when I watched the Chris Farley documentary over the summer. Here is a comedian who is loved by so many people, who made so many folks laugh with his work…however deep inside he was so self-deprecating, so lonely and sad, and was so damn hard on himself. Now I don’t do comedy (though folks have encouraged me to consider it, why I don’t know?), but in many ways what I do at work can be seen as a performance: I have to win over my students every semester, produce kick-ass research, and be a team player (hmm, like The Second City?) through service obligations. And like Farley, there have definitely been moments where I am downright not kind to myself – I get upset that I didn’t say something correctly at a meeting, my teaching didn’t go as well as planned, the part of the manuscript I wrote for my research team reads like shit, the list unfortunately can go on and on.

But here’s the catch: when you’re trying your best to parade around campus like a rockstar, when you are trying to perform like Farley did, how can you tell folks that you are in fact, really struggling, and admit to yourself that you can’t do it all, and that you need to either step away, push back, or get help?

It’s taken me a lot of self-reflection (and a ton of therapy too, I’ll admit) but here is what I’ve gathered and can share:

Be transparent. I don’t know if it was a power dynamic thing, but I came to the realization that I had been more honest with my students than my colleagues when it came to my stress. When I finally “came clean” to some of my co-workers, many of them said, “Oh, I didn’t realize you were struggling, you always seemed so put together at work.” Lesson learned folks: you don’t need to look a hot mess at the workplace, but perhaps being transparent to those you trust at work can help you find the support you need to get through the day. Which brings me to #2…

Find the type of social support you need. For me, I have folks at work who serve as mentors, sounding boards, mental health checkers, accountability buddies, listeners…[insert supportive role here]. And then of course, I have folks outside of work who serve the important purpose of listening to me if I need to vent about work (but who aren’t completely in the context), as well as take my mind off of work if I need to relax. I must say that my fiance does a *fantastic* job of doing this, which is one of the many reasons why I am marrying him. So find those folks, and never let them go. 🙂

Learn how to say no. Yes, I understand, this is very difficult to do as an untenured, junior faculty member, but as a mentor once told me, you have to set boundaries for yourself because no one else will. Trust me, I had to learn things the hard way (namely in the form of kidney stones the summer after my second year as a faculty member) – it’s #NOTWORTHIT. As my therapist once asked me, “What’s the worst that will happen if X doesn’t get done?” This makes you wonder. Will your whole department/university crumble upon itself if you say no/ask to extend the deadline/graciously give the task to someone else? No? Then don’t feel bad about passing an opportunity to make more space for the things you actually want to do. Thus, in a related vein…

Learn when to say yes. One of my wonderful colleagues Scott Sherman put it this way – when it comes to agreeing to take on tasks, ask yourself: (1) Will this be helpful for tenure purposes? If not, then (2) Is this something I’m personally super passionate about? If not, then (3) Am I going to get paid big bucks to do this? Also folks, remember that saying “Let me think about it” is a perfectly acceptable response. I know that if you are a people pleaser with social anxiety like me this may come off to you as not being a team player (or worse, you may think you’re being an asshole), but #letsbehonest to ourselves with some positive self talk. Remember: saying you’re “thinking about it” means you are being realistic and thoughtful about what you have on your plate, which is much more appreciated in the end than a half-assed product.

Lastly, continue to do things outside of work that make you happy, and STAHP feeling so damn guilty about it. I am scolding myself just as much as I am scolding everyone else. Case in point: I love to dance. I used to go to salsa on the regular, take kizomba classes, and attend dance socials. At the beginning of the academic year I was dancing 2-3 times a week. Then what happened? The mid-semester beast engulfed me yet once again and instead I found myself going home every night, exhausted and feeling depressed (probably because I wasn’t dancing as much but I was too damn tired, perpetuating an awful cycle that was too difficult to break) and I found myself feeling overwhelmed and unhappy. To that I say #nothankyou – let’s break this nasty cycle! Find/embrace your most beloved hobby and run/dance/draw/sing/read/yoga away with it! I’m going to try harder in 2016 for sure, so keep me accountable. 😉

Those of you who know me know that I am a very giving person by nature (much to my detriment at times, but let’s leave that for another blog post haha) – for me, this post not only serves as my outlet/therapy, but it is my commitment to not go down this path of burn out and isolation, but to crawl out of the hole, come out of the closet, and pay it forward to future junior faculty out there by serving as a role model. A model of a faculty member who is definitely human and in no way perfect, but who strives every single day to do what is best for her body, soul, and mind first and foremost, and to do everything in her power to do her job as best as she can in a way that can help as many people as possible.

For me, I’ve decided that I’m choosing people over publications, I’m choosing relationships over results. Maybe it’s stupid. Maybe it’s unwise. Who knows, maybe it will eventually kill my chances of tenure. But for me, it’s the choice that makes sense. For me, it’s the choice that makes me feel happy and fulfilled. And at the end of the day, when I am looking back at my life, I’m the only person I need to please in the long run so that’s what I’ve ultimately decided I’m going with.

As a communication scholar, of course I understand the importance of making sure folks are “getting” my message. I also believe that communicators need to be as clear and concise as possible, in order to avoid any sort of confusion.

With that said, when I was on the job market as a grad student at UMD, I thought the best way to describe my research stream was to show it visually. And so, I created this venn diagram:

To me, this was a clear representation of how my two areas of research (PR and Health Communication) tie together into my dissertation project, which in turn was how I talked about the work I hoped to accomplish in the future. I actually opened my job talk with this visual, and then went into further detail about the different areas on each side of the venn and the various projects in these areas. I even paid out of pocket (a tough thing to do as a broke grad student, trust me!) to print this diagram out in color in order to give it to those who came to my job talk.

Now as a junior faculty member, when I give advice to grad students, I suggest creating something similar to this in order to visually show where your research is coming from, how it leads to your diss, and where you see it going. For me, this was a great conversation-starter piece about my work, and it seemed to go well for me in the end, as I was soon after offered my job here at VCU.

PS – In terms of elevator speeches, we have our PR students practice this all the time, so it is definitely something engrained in my field. However, another variation of this that I found to be interesting and fun was to ask my fiance what he tells people when they ask about what I do/what I research. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised at his answer! 😉

So I’m not exactly answering this blog post prompt correctly because I am not developing a PowerPoint presentation, but I did want to share a poster that my amazingly gifted grad student Candace Parrish (hire her folks!) designed for us as part of the VCU Institute for Women’s Health annual event: Women’s Health Research Day.

As someone who pretty much dreads making posters, I really appreciate Candace’s wonderful attention to detail and how she makes the research we’ve conducted stand out and pop. I love how her poster designs stray from the boring, usual academic poster presentation – and I think it helped us a bit in our case, as the work presented in this very poster won the Building Interdisciplinary Bridges in Women’s Health Research Award (that came with a snazzy $1000 prize for conference travel might I add!).

Another awesome thing about this poster was that I was able to give it to our community partner, the Action Alliance, so that they could display it in their office/share it with staff, etc. It was a nice token of our appreciation for being so willing to work with us!

As I’ve mentioned many times before to colleagues I’ve met at conferences and the like, I want my research to make a difference. I would joke how I’d prefer my work to be read outside of the white dudes in their ivory tower, and for it to make an applied, lasting impact.

After the #CuriousCoLab readings and discussions on open scholarship, however, I am feeling a little bit more like a hypocrite.

As a communication scholar that studies social media, of course I am all for promoting my research via these channels (it’s a big reason why I am so happy to follow this online course for no credit!). I’ve always enjoyed blogging and sharing my passions online – I mean #letsbehonest, my job is to teach my students how to create and promote their online brand, so of course I’m a proponent of this method. In fact, one of my summer projects is to work with my computer programmer fiance to build me a personal website where I can brag about myself to the masses even more. 😛

Where then, is my hypocrisy, you ask? Well, it is the other side of open scholarship – the open access journals – that is plaguing me a bit. Coming from a Research 1 institution (Go Terps!), I have been trained to shoot for high impact journals. The kind that institutions need a subscription to gain access to. Yes, *gulp* the same ones that probably only those white dudes in the ivory tower are able to read and critique. I’ve become a bit of a publishing snob in this sense that whenever I get open access invitations in my inbox I scoff and immediately click delete.

Now do you see why I’m torn, why I have this complicated love/hate relationship with open scholarship? On the one hand, sharing your research (especially community-engaged research!) by all means necessary is a great way to get you and your community partners out there. Social media is a fantastic way to get scholarship out to those who wouldn’t have come across it in the first place. On the other hand, I have been trained to believe that publishing the OA route limits my chances of being taken seriously in academia, and that it may hurt my chances of tenure and promotion in the future (and after all the hard work, there is no way I’d risk jeopardizing that).

So what now then? I have always been one to weigh my options (to the chagrin of my significant other when he asks me what I want for dinner). I’ve come to the conclusion that I will just go by “it depends.” Depending on the scope and focus of my work, I can look at my publishing options (both in social media and open access form, high impact journals and other dissemination means) and determine what would be the best fit, both for the research itself and for me as a junior scholar hoping to grow and make a difference in my community. And for me, that’s about the best I can do, though as always, I am always open for suggestions from those who have been successful.

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